Page 101 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
My pulse slammed against my throat, a gasp escaping me as it sent out a piercing cry.
The creature’s face split wider than it should, mandibles clicking open to show teeth like frozen glass—rows and rows of them, jagged and glistening.
Draven dodged, his cloak snapping with frost-laden wind as another leg crashed down where he’d stood an instant before.
Another ear-splitting screech rang out, before a constellation of red, glinting eyes blinked into existence. All of them locked onto Draven, all of them seeing too much.
The vision jolted and blurred as the monster disappeared beneath the icy ground. I could feel Draven’s anger, the undertones of panic as the ground beneath him shook.
Then, the beast burst free from beneath the ice again, erupting upward in a spray of snow and shattered stone. Draven braced against the impact, frost blazing from his palms, but the sheer force of it still sent him skidding back.
I cried out, but the sound sent me flying back into my own consciousness.
Instead, I focused on the book in my hands, flipping back through the pages.
Ancient… It was the only explanation I could think of for something this powerful. Some terror escaped from fireside stories, or old legends… a nightmare come to life. That’s what had been niggling at me…
Finally, I found the page I was searching for. Bile crept up my throat as I stared down at sketches and notes about theElderborne—the name scholars gave the colossal beasts that had no place in a world fenced by wards and treaties.
With a trembling finger I traced the inked diagram. Across the margin, an old textbook line stared up at me in my cramped script:
Where the Elderborne walked,the Shard Mother swept her hand. She unmade their nests and salted their lairs that the fae might not be ground beneath them; had she not, the Courts themselves would have been devoured and the line of fae extinguished.
The sentence strucklike an executioner's axe.
Whatever had happened to unbalance Winter, it was escalating sharply now if the divide had awoken one of these.
Panic tasted metallic at the back of my mouth.
Draven’s face fractured through my thoughts—snow clinging to his hair, his jaw set, the way he moved like he was carving order out of chaos. But it wasn’t working. The creature wasn’t slowing down.
He couldn’t fight this alone. He couldn’t… He could… He will not die.
My breathing hitched as I forced my thoughts away from the dark path they were racing down.
Maybe—if I could reach him—I could give him an edge.
I scanned my notes again, desperate for anything that might pass as a weakness. There—a faint line sketched at the juncture where the plated armor of its leg met the body, an old annotation noting how the scales there shifted with each movement, leaving a vulnerable seam.
I locked onto the drawing, tracing the ink with my fingertip, pouring every shred of will I had into the page.See it, I begged silently.See it, Draven. Right here.
The surprise that hummed through the link between us was so sharp and real, I had to believe it came from the image I’d just carved into his mind. That I had done something besides sit and stew in my own fear.
My hands clenched until my knuckles ached. My talons slid free from my fingertips aching to do more.
Always. Always the ache to do more.
Monsters gnawed at Draven’s kingdom—the kingdom I had sworn myself to, whether I’d wanted to or not. And every time they came, I was forced to sit on the sidelines while the people I loved bled for a world I couldn’t touch.
Useless. Helpless.
Unless…
I raced over to my bookshelves, yanking another one free. An older book, bound in Unseelie leather and sent to me for a reason.
Do not take your freedom just to walk to your death.
But what if I wasn’t walking to my death? What if this was the only way to save the people of Winter?
